Welcome!

 

Sunset on the Cowees, viewed from Richland Balsam, 2009

Having hiked and explored most of the mountain ranges in Western North Carolina, I can attest to the fact that different ranges have different personalities. Whether picking blueberries in the Great Balsams, climbing the lofty Crest Trail in the Black Mountains, or enjoying the long-range views from the grassy balds of the Roans, I’m aware that each location has distinct characteristics. Often, a photo can distill the essence of a range, especially the three ranges that I’ve just mentioned.

Sometimes, it is easy to find the words to describe a mountain range and how it is unlike the next. More often, though, the less charismatic ranges conceal their personalities. After inhabiting a patch of land in the Cowee Mountains for several decades, I still strive to understand and communicate just what makes them the Cowees, besides their geographic position dividing the waters of the Little Tennessee from the Tuckasegee.

After all these years, I still don’t have many answers, but I do feel the need to continue asking, “What is the heart of the Cowees?” So, that ongoing effort will be one aspect of this website.

But that’s not all. I have journals and notes from many travels throughout the Southern Appalachians and beyond. This will be a site to compile those accounts and to indulge my other research interests, such as the ethnogenesis of native people in the region, place names, agriculture, panther sightings past and present, wildflower photography, vanished places, vintage postcards, old maps, utopian schemes and much more.

My research has led me to many obscure documents from the past five hundred years that shed light on the southern mountains and the Southeast in general. I intend to feature extended passages from some of those accounts. Tourism promoters and history professors have their own way of spinning the story of these mountains, and I hope to counterbalance some of their unfortunate excesses, one story at a time. Perhaps, in a small way, I can share the joy I have experienced in my explorations of the land and the historical record.